Black Flowers

I sometimes picture myself on a set of scales, tarnished silver, claiming to offer justice, but instead never quite balancing out fairly. I stand between the two sides; to my right lies eternal peace and solitude, the quiet of solemn death. To my left, the pulsing, thrumming existence in full color of life, drinking, feeling, touching. Something as simple and elemental as breathing is quite beyond me. Why take a breath when you can't feel the cool of the air slip into your lungs like fog upon the sea? Why worry about sustenance when you know you'll never die? I starve in a different manner, I suffer from hunger of a different kind.

In this scenario, I am neither living nor dying. I am not whole. I am fractured, bits of me scattered upon the cresting, foaming waves of the sea, chilled to whatever bone marrow I may yet possess. The other fragments drift upon cloud, staring down eternally on a world I shall never feel, never become one with.

I stand on the bow of my ship, my tattered black doublet collecting salty sea spray, memory bringing a taste of it to my tongue. I work my lips, hoping, praying, for one small droplet of satisfaction, one glorifying taste.

I feel nothing but the chill.

My baldric, worn and weathered leather, swings against me as the rough seas tear at the Pearl, my flintlock pistol carefully shielded from the weather. And if it fired, whom would it injure? Which man would it kill? My crew is made of drifters, in every sense of the word. They fear the name Barbossa. They hiss it like a curse, or quiver like autumn leaves when my shadow crosses their path. When the lanterns swing, when they light my face, I see them recoil.

They watch me with wary eyes, or perhaps one, in the case of Jenkins. They hobble about with their wet buckets, the slop from the decks collecting under their boots as they drag their feet aimlessly, nothing to live for, nothing to lose or gain…they hold their grimy cards and bet with the only things they have. False teeth, bits of fabric from whores in Barbados, a gold earring or two. Jenkins once bet his false eye for a swig of ale he knew he couldn't taste.

It seems, as they stumble about, growling and spitting as men of the sea often do, they wait for me to reach a breaking point. I am a wave to them, cresting. They are the sandbar. When I curl, I shall obliterate them.

But will I, truly?

I have been known to throw the occasional blackguard off of the starboard plank, that which extends the farthest and gives him the least chance of swimming back. Any man willing to stab me in the back with his knife knowing full well it won't kill me isn't worthy of being on my crew.

I am not an unreasonable man. I am cautious, I move with a grace I believe is borne of a life caught in perpetual stillness. I have no reason to run, to flee. May cannonballs fly, may my men be long-nines fodder, I don't particularly care. I'd strap myself to the mast and catch shrapnel in my teeth if that was what it took to keep my ship afloat. She's all I care about. My men may linger on this earth for eternity, wandering skeletons with nary a ligament to their bones, but the ship is sacred. The ship is hallowed.

Every board, every bulkhead, every lanyard, has had the blood of some poor pirate, unknown to man nor sea, spilled upon it. Every rivet and nail on this ship has been touched by hands, hands of men who worked and sweat upon the seas, who felt the length and breadth of it, who drank it in with their eyes. If there's one thing I linger for, if there's one thing I suffer this waiting game in want of, it's to see this ship sail proudly under my banner, without any white-wigged Commodore polishing her decks.

I am like a leper in this skin, this layer of black and tatter, of feather and shadow, which I cannot shed. I itch in it, I physically burn, as if Hell itself crawls, slithers up through the boards at night, wraps its hated arms around me and struggles to bring me down. Only when it realizes my current world is much harsher than brimstone and flame does it release me. It senses my sickness, my weakness, my complete inability to feel.

If there's one thing I long for…one thing I need…it is to feel. Not just to physically feel. I can sit on the lovely silk duvet of my bed in my captain's quarters, long since plundered from the coasts of the Caribbean. I can't feel the fabric beneath my hands, these hands so pale and translucent, useless veins coursing blue and green beneath the stagnant skin. Ah, no. To feel would surely be a pleasure to my fingertips, to let them tingle with the coolness of a silver goblet, the lovely, leather skin of a bright red apple, the smooth satin of a corset.

I long, simply, for my heart to beat properly, to bear within it some semblance of love, of romance, of the possibility of feeling anything other than cold hatred, malice, greed. It knows only these things which require no tenderness, no delicacy, to feel. Hatred is not a feeling, it is a way of life. I have embodied it. I have chained men to decks and left them marooned on cursed islands, blasted them into the water with words harsh enough to turn the most sour stomach, the hardest heart.

I remember these things clearly.

But when was the last time I kissed? The last time I held? The last time passion was mine to feel, ecstasy was not in the glitter of a doubloon, but in the glimmer of a sweet smile?

In the sparkling of green eyes?

It has been far too long.

I remember her face as clear as my own reflection before me in my silver platter. Her face, palest porcelain, glowing with a radiance I could only describe as angelic. Her eyes, perfect, green, bright with life. Her pink lips, soft, turned in a smile, always. Her laugh. The way her pale feet danced…

I remember her red hair floating in the water as she sank, weighted down with more than what she found on deck. Weighted down with the knowledge that the man she loved would kill another for her everlasting companionship. She couldn't bear to know another life was lost because of her beauty. She had seen it as a curse, a black spot on her own hand. She would rather die than see another…

Was that the exact moment I died? Was that how I became a cursed man? When I dove in after her, pulling her body onto the deck, limp and cold? When I pressed my lips to hers, blue and lavender, holding her gray skin? Oh, would that her chest had risen and fallen, one last time! That I had the chance to tell her I loved her, the last time I would ever feel again.

I could feel the hot tears, then. The pain in my chest, in my heart, tearing at my ribs and threatening to engulf my entire being. It spread through me, a fire of anger, of loss, of overwhelming pain.

It was in that moment, I believe, that my heart stopped.

It was also that day, that very same day, that the first piece of that damned gold fell into my hand. It was a replacement for the craving I had had for her love, for her love forever.

The same craving that twists now into the desire to feel. To hold. To kiss. To embrace.

The only thing I can embrace now is perpetual coldness…the midnight skies stretching above me by night, guiding me with sharp stars…the endless sun beating down by day, taunting me, grinning. It laughs at me, scorns me. It berates my shame, my ugliness.

For what woman would look at this face and desire? How can I dare to hope? I truly am a leper. Untouchable, unable to be healed. I wrap myself in shrouds and hide myself from the world that cannot save me, cannot make me a true man again.

I sit now on the end of my bed, laying my fingers across the delicate crimson. Nothing. I feel nothing. Not the whisper of air, not the rustle of fabric. Nothing but emptiness, a yawning space.

I stare across the room, into my reflection in the gilded mirror. Hideous thing. I should have it removed, cast into the depths. It mocks me only.

For who is that man, sitting there? Wrapped in black and cast aside from the world, he waits, hollow and broken. He waits for the soft hands to embrace him, to guide him. He longs for the one piece of his life to fit. The broken, bloodied coins to fall into place.

Has my penance not been paid? Have my promises not been fulfilled? I gave my heart, I gave my soul, and more. What else can I offer? What more of my being can I sacrifice?

Oh, to be human. To be free of these chains.

I lift my eyes from my reflection, the shadow of a man that once stood tall, now collapsed and crumbling on the edge of his own half-life. There, across from me, sit flowers. Roses, to be exact. They are black, covered in a fine layer of dust and decay. Black roses, ready to fall to the floor, ready to die...

Living in eternal stillness, waiting for the tide to come.

Thank you for reading! Any and all reviews are greatly appreciated. To those of you following Fate Intervenes, I have begun posting again. :)